The History of Education Part 59

9. Show that the work of Prussia, in using the schools for national ends, was: (a) in keeping with the work of the French Revolutionary leaders, and (b) only a further extension of the organizing work done by Frederick the Great.

10. Show how the universities of Germany early took the lead of the universities of the world, and the influence of this fact on national progress.

11. Enumerate the new nineteenth-century tendencies observable in the early educational organization in Prussia.

12. Explain the marked mid-nineteenth-century reaction to educational development which set in.

13. Explain the early and marked welcome accorded science-study in German lands.

14. Explain in what ways Prussia attained an educational leaders.h.i.+p, ahead of other nations.

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections, ill.u.s.trative of the contents of this chapter, are reproduced:

273. Barnard: The Organizing Work of Frederick William I.

274. Prussia: The School Code of 1763.

275. Prussia: The Silesian School Code of 1765.

276. Austria: The School Code of 1774.

277. Fichte: Addresses to the German Nation.

278. Mann: The Prussian Elementary Teacher and his Training.

279. Dinter: Prussian Schools and Teachers as he found them.

280. Cousin: Report on Education in Prussia.

281. Mann: The Military Aspect of Prussian Education.,

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Explain the interest of Frederick William I (273) in elementary education.

2. Characterize, from the Codes of 1763 (274) and 1765 (275), and cite paragraph to show: (a) The type of instruction ordered provided; (b) the type of teacher expected; (c) the character of the attendance required; and (d) the character of the continuation training ordered.

3. Show the similarity in their main lines of the Prussian (274) and Austrian (276) Codes.

4. Would the reasoning of Fichte (277) apply to any crushed nation?

Ill.u.s.trate.

5. Do we select teachers for training as carefully in the United States today as they did in Prussia eighty years ago (278)? Could we?

6. Did such conditions as Dinter describes (279) exist, even later, with us?

7. Was the Prussian school system, as described by Cousin (280), a centralized or a decentralized system?

8. Show that Mann's reasoning as to the strength of the Prussian school system (281) was thoroughly sound.

SELECTED REFERENCES

* Alexander, Thomas. _The Prussian Elementary Schools_.

* Barnard, Henry. "Public Instruction in Prussia"; in _American Journal of Education_, vol. XX, pp. 333-434.

Barnard, Henry. _German Teachers and Educators_.

* Ca.s.sell, Henry. "Adolph Diesterweg"; in _Educational Review_, vol.

I, pp. 345-56. (April, 1891.) Friedel, V. H. _The German School as a War Nursery_.

Lexis, W. _A General View of the History and Organization of Public Education in the German Empire_.

* Nohle, E. "History of the German School System"; in _Report U.S.

Commissioner of Education_, 1897-98, vol. I, pp. 3-82. Translated from Rein's _Encyclopadisches Handbuch der Padagogik_.

* Paulsen, Fr. _German Education, Past and Present_.

* Paulsen, Fr. _The German Universities_.

* Russell, James. _German Higher Schools_.

Seeley, J. R. _Life and Times of Stein_, vol. I.

CHAPTER XXIII

NATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN FRANCE AND ITALY

I. NATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN FRANCE

LINES OF DEVELOPMENT MARKED OUT BY THE REVOLUTION. The Revolution proved very disastrous to the old forms of education in France. The old educational foundations, acc.u.mulated through the ages, were swept away, and the teaching congregations, which had provided the people with whatever education they had enjoyed, were driven from the soil. The ruin of educational and religious inst.i.tutions in Russia under the recent rule of the Bolshevists is perhaps comparable to what happened in France. Many plans were proposed by the Revolutionary philosophers and enthusiasts, as we have seen (chapter xx), to replace what had once been and to provide better than had once been done for the educational needs of the ma.s.ses of the people, but with results that were small in comparison with the expectations of the legislative a.s.semblies which considered or approved them. Nevertheless, the directions of future progress in educational organization were clearly marked out before Napoleon came to power, and the work which he did was largely an extension, and a reduction to working order, of what had been proposed or established by the enthusiasts of the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods. At the time of the Revolution the State definitely took over the control of education from the Church, and the work of Napoleon and those who came after him was to organize public instruction into a practical state-controlled system.

In effecting this organization, the preceding discussions of education as a function of the State and the desirable forms of organization to follow all bore important fruit, and the forms finally adopted embodied not only the ideas contained in the legislation of the revolutionary a.s.semblies, but the earlier theoretical discussion of the subject by Rolland (p. 510), Diderot (p. 511), and Talleyrand (p. 513) as well. They embodied also the peculiar administrative genius of France--that desire for uniformity in organization and administration--and hence stand in contrast to the state educational organizations worked out about the same time in German lands.

The German States, as we have seen, had for long been working toward state control of education, but when this was finally attained they still permitted a large degree of local initiative and control. The French, on the contrary, made the transition in a few years, and the system of state control which they established provided for uniformity, and for centralized supervision and inspection in the hands of the State. The forms for state control and education adopted in the two countries were also expressive of age-long tendencies in each. For three centuries German political organization, as we have seen, had been extremely decentralized on the one hand, and had been slowly evolving a system of education under the joint control of the small States and the Church on the other. In France, on the contrary, centralization of authority and subordination to a central government had been the tendency for an even longer period. When the time arrived for the State to take over education from the Church, it was but natural that France should tend toward a much more highly centralized control than did the German States, and the differing political situations of the two countries, at the opening of the nineteenth century, gave added emphasis to these differing tendencies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 174. AN OLD FOUNDATION TRANSFORMED This was an ancient chateau in France. In 1604 Henry IV gave it to the Jesuits for a school. In 1791 it became national property, and was transformed into a Military College.]

In consequence, Prussia and the other German States early achieved a form of state educational organization which emphasized local interest and the spirit of the instruction, whereas France created an administrative organization which emphasized central control and, for the time, the form rather than the spirit of instruction. This was well pointed out by Victor Cousin (R. 280), in contrasting conditions in Prussia with those existing in France.

NAPOLEON BEGINS THE ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION. In 1799 Napoleon became First Consul and master of France, and in 1804 France, by vote, changed from a Republic to an Empire, with Napoleon as first Emperor. Until his banishment to Saint Helena (1815) he was master of France. A man of large executive capacity and an organizing genius of great ability, whether he turned to army organization, governmental organization, the codification of the laws, or the organization of education, Napoleon's practical and constructive mind quickly reduced parts to their proper places in a well- regulated scheme. Shortly after he became Consul he took up, among other things, the matter of educational organization.

His first effort was in 1800, when he transformed the old humanistic College Louis le Grand (founded 1567) and created four military colleges from its endowment. One of these colleges he later, in characteristic fas.h.i.+on, transformed into a School of Arts and Trades (R. 282). In 1802 he signed the famous Concordat with the Pope. This restored the priests to the churches, with state aid for their stipends, and virtually turned over primary education again to the Church for care and control. The "Brothers of the Christian Schools" (p. 515) were recalled the next year and especially favored, and soon established themselves more firmly than before the Revolution.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 175. COUNT DE FOURCROY (1755-1809)]

In 1802 Napoleon first turned his attention to a general organization of public instruction by directing Count de Fourcroy, a distinguished chemist who had been a teacher in the Polytechnic School, and whom he appointed Director of Public Instruction, to draw up, according to his ideas, an organizing law on the subject. This became the Law of 1802. It was divided into nine chapters, as follows:

I. Degrees of Instruction.

II. Primary Schools.

III. Secondary Schools.

IV. Lycees.

V. Special Schools.

VI. The Military School.

VII. The National Pupils.

VIII. The _nationales pensions_ IX. General regulations.